MAIN Sara speaks with Karen - Julie settles in

Day 70

Crissy and Ashley had tasked Sara with talking to every Master in the Hive and trying to discover their blind spots. Sara thought that this was a great idea, but had no intention of telling them about any fatal flaws to the Master's plans that she found. She had already interviewed Crissy. She seemed like a logical starting point. And although Ashley should have been next since Sara had no access to Barbara, or GreaterBarbara as everyone still called her. Ashley was never in the mansion neither was Susan or whoever it was Barbara first gave her dark gift to. Sara had tracked down and spoken to Officer Owens but she didn't have much to say. She wasn't very talkative and seemed much more monster than human to Sara, a creature of habit that now protected and served the Hive.

The next few people Sara had talked to were in no particular order. And all three of them were much like Owens. One was almost mute. She would answer questions with short simple sentences and had nothing to say really. Clearly, she was just a worker drone in this colony without enough of her old self to be anything more than a 5'6 slug hiding in a woman's body. One of the three had been pretty expressive and seemed to enjoy her life, but that was still just her Master talking. None of the three let their old self speak even when Sara requested it. Although all three could do a fairly good impression of them as long as you didn't press them to think too hard or talk about anything serious or involved.

Sara was walking down the hall when Olivia passed her. That one seemed to be everywhere. Outside of her room, Sara saw Olivia on an almost regular basis every hour or two. If she was a drone Sara probably wouldn't have thought much about it. But as a human trapped in the Hive she knew that Olivia was keeping an eye on her.

Cory and Karen had been spending a lot of their time in Sara's room. M had told Sara that her art was a no go in the Master's world. None of them would have any interest in making art and even the doodles she made in her notebook were dangerous. Books and manga were fine though, acquiring human knowledge was a trait that Master valued and as a result, she was catching up on her reading when she wasn't exploring her newfound sexual self with Karen and Cory.

This night Karen was cuddled up next to Sara and Cory was sleeping on the oversized couch in her room. Sara had discovered that sleeping with Cory was difficult. He was often hard and having his dick poking her would get her horny. And that led to her playing with herself, which would wake Cory up. Then he would dutifully satisfy her sexual needs. This had happened four times the one night he slept with her. It had been exhausting.

Sara breathed in the sweet smell that clung to Karen. It still made her horny. M had told her that Master's were immune to the effects of the pheromones they produced. M was able to shield Sara from most of it, but as long as she was in the mansion she was perpetually wet and lusty. Sara threw off her covers and sat down on one of the chairs by her window. A few minutes later Karen awoke and joined her in the chair at the opposite end of the window.

"Are you still having trouble sleeping?" Karen said.

"Yeah, I just can't get used to this bed, maybe it's too soft," Sara lied.

"I will inform Lana or Samantha and have them bring in a firmer one for you," Karen replied dutifully.

"No, no, I'll get used to it," Sara said as she stretched out her arm to reach for the pile of cough drops on the table by the bed. Popping one of the eucalyptus lozenges in her mouth she examined Karen in the light of the moon. She had been one of the most beautiful girls in school. Sara hadn't even been all that jealous of Karen even though she was always crushing on Cory. Why wouldn't a guy want her? Karen had always been nice and cheerful and was an amazing lover. Sara realized that if she kept down this mental path she was going to have another sleepless night ahead of her, this time with Karen to blame. So she got up, turned on the reading light between the bed and window chair, and retrieved her notebook.

"So the rumors at school were always that Cory was a cheater and you were too blind to see, is that true," Sara asked as she opened the notebook to a blank page and write KAREN at the top of it.

Karen tilted her head and frowned, "I...I... this is a very complicated subject. Is it really that important?" Karen said after a minute.

Sara frowned, "Maybe... Can you let Karen speak for herself?" Sara knew that it was a long shot but she knew that Old Crissy had come through a few times in their interview and everyone knew that Old Ashley spoke often.

Karen's face changed to a serene smile, then a frown again. Suddenly it became wracked with anguish and after a few moments a tear began running down her face and she sniffled. Sara quickly set her pad down and stood, putting a hand on Karen's shoulder to comfort her.

Sara was in her My Little Pony pajamas but Karen was stark naked. She reached a hand toward the bed, then through her tears quietly said, "I'm cold can you get me a blanket?"

Sara walked over and pulled the comforter off of the bed. Then she grabbed a box of tissues from the nightstand and handed them both to Karen. Karen mumbled, "Thank you," as she covered herself and blew her nose, and wiped her eyes.

After about ten minutes of silence, Karen seemed to have composed herself and Sara reached for the pad feeling a bit guilty at what she had just unleashed.

"I'm sorry, I know that you... the Master that you've become can't understand but I have been trapped for almost a week now inside my own head and had given up ever being able to be myself again. I just gave up hope and thought I wouldn't ever be able to be me ever again." Karen said her gaze fixed on the floor.

Sara said, "It's alright Karen I don't really understand but I get it. My connection to M... my Master is different from the rest. I can be me and not be me at the same time."

Karen's head popped up and she looked Sara in the eye, "So is that the real you Sara?" she said almost excitedly. "Are you like Ashley and can switch back and forth?" Karen reached out a hand to touch Sara but the two chairs were too far apart for her to reach.

Sara smiled at Karen, "Our relationship is a little different. It's like I am me, but I am also a Master, I can't really explain it." Sara knew that even though she was talking to the Karen she had known since kindergarten the Master was still in her listening. So she couldn't tell Karen the truth. Sara decided that getting too distracted trying to comfort Karen was suspicious so she opened her notepad again and said, "So about you and Cory."

Karen sat back in her chair and took a deep breath, "I knew he was a cheater. We went out for three years. For the first year and a half I had a few nagging suspicions but never pushed him about it. Then junior year, my friends told me that a freshman had told them that she had had sex with him. They decided to 'help' me by investigating and found three more girls that also claimed to have done it with him. They told me the four names and said I should break up with him. I didn't want to believe it so I ignored it till one weekend when we went to a party. Cory had disappeared on me and I really wanted to go home. I looked for him for about half an hour and bumped into one of the four girls. She was the freshman, she was pretty drunk and sitting all alone. I was mad at Cory so I confronted her about him."

Karen blew her nose again and then pulled the comforter tighter like it was emotional armor. "I thought that they had been fooling around and that that was where he had gone off to. She denied it and said that she had only had sex with him once. She said that he had started pursuing her after she tried out for cheer. I guess that some of the team captains from sports teams help judge the cheer tryouts. She told me that he had flirted with her and a couple other girls. And that for a month afterward, he had pursued her. She hadn't made the squad but he said he could change that. So she had sex with him and she got a spot on the cheer team. But she told me that he never showed any interest in her after that. I was about to call her a liar when Cory walked up and asked me if I wanted to go home. I was so angry at them both that I stormed off and got another guy to take me home."

"For the next week, I lay in bed crying. I told everyone that I had the flu but I was devastated. Cory came over every day and tried to nurse me and cheer me up, it just made me feel worse. The next weekend he didn't come to my house and I pulled myself together for school on Monday. It took me another week to gather the strength to confront the next girl." Sara was fully into the story now. It seemed to Sara that Karen had never told this to anyone and being able to tell someone now seemed to be making her gather her old self back up.

"She was in our class and had a completely different story. She had had a crush on him forever and had always pined for him. On Friday night sophomore year she had confessed to him. It was his first year as a varsity quarterback, I remember the night well. He had won his first four games but got crushed in this one. He played really poorly and probably lost the game single-handedly. After the game, I saw him go into the locker room and he never came out. I even went in looking for him after everyone else left. But he wasn't there. The next time I talked to him he said he had just gone straight home after the game because he couldn't face his teammates. It made sense at the time." Karen was really getting into telling her story now.

"The girl told me that she had waited in the locker room. She had no idea what happened in the game. He was the first one through the door and she asked him to come out into the hallway with her. He did and she confessed. She had expected him to reject her and was prepared for that. But instead, he went into the athletic office and got the key to the doors separating the gym wing of the school from the rest and she said he basically grabbed her ad dragged her into the school. She said he took her into a bathroom and fucked her 'amazingly hard', her words. I could tell from looking in her eyes that she wanted him even more than she had before that night and this was a year afterward. He told her that it was a one-time thing but she kept after him. A few days later he let her take him home with her and they fucked again. But this time he told her that that was it, she was dead to him, and wouldn't even look at her ever again. She started crying at that point, and I felt oddly happy about it."

"The next two girls had similar stories to the first two. One girl Cory pursued the other pursued him. Both had been one-time affairs. I felt both relieved and conflicted. I began running through all the times he had disappeared for an hour or had said he had extra practice or otherwise couldn't spend time with me. I figured out that he could have had sex with half the girls in school, maybe he did, I don't know. What I did know was that he kept coming back to me. And had even told all four girls I talked to that it was a one-time thing." Karen motioned to the lozenges on the table by Sara, "Can I try one?"

Sara handed it to her and after putting it in her mouth and making a sour face, Karen continued, "I did obsess over every time he had an excuse why we couldn't be together. Many of the excuses checked out as real, but some didn't. He kept cheating junior year but it really seemed to slow down senior year. Heck until two weeks ago it had been three months since he did anything suspicious."

"What happened two weeks ago?" Sara asked.

"He blew me off on a night that he promised to study with me for finals. He didn't answer his phone for hours." Karen's face clouded again and she looked like she might cry. In a choked voice she said, "that was the day Olivia, Amanda, and Becky ambushed him. I have memories of it in my head." Karen shuddered visibly under her fabric fortress. "Because I have seen his memories now I know how eager he was to fuck Olivia. I can hear his thoughts as he realized that he was about to attain one of the unattainable girls on his mental checklist. I can feel how hard his erection got, it kind of hurt actually. And the feeling he had when he came inside her..." Now a few tears did start but Karen quickly regained her composer. "Well needless to say the three fucked like rabbits for hours. One of them slapped a Master on him after he fucked Olivia and he was completely in their power after that. But how he felt when he saw Olivia naked... it still kind of hurts. I've been dwelling on it since I got his memories, right after he and Samantha visited me to give me my Master." A few more tears rolled down but Karen ignored them.

"I can understand how hard it must be to deal with all that trapped inside yourself," Sara said in a quiet gentle voice. They sat silently for a minute. Sara had no desire to dreg up any other memories from Karen but also didn't want her Master to crush her back into the prison she had given up hope in.

Sara turned her face to iron, giving the most imposing and stern look she could muster. "New Karen, hear me, from now on you will relinquish control beginning one hour before Karen goes to sleep and you will not resume control til she wakes in the morning."

Karen's body jerked, her face went from melancholy to a stubborn pucker in a flash, "But I can't... it is most irregular..."

Sara stood and looked down at New Karen. She tried to look as imposing as she could at five foot four and wearing My Little Pony pajamas and put her fists on her hips. "I command you as... as Inquisitor," Inquisitor, no one had ever called her that but she liked the sound of it. "As Inquisitor, I command you to follow my orders. This is an experiment and it has the same authority as if it came from Ashley or Crissy. You will do as I say." Sara just stood there, silently praying that the Master in Karen was as inflexible and simple-minded as so many of them seemed to be.

"Very well," Karen said. "If it comes from your authority as In...quisitor," Karen seemed completely unfamiliar with the word. "In that case, I will do as the Hive wills." Karen looked up unblinking at Sara.

"Well...," Sara said as she stared down. Karen just kept looking at her with a blank stare. "We are going back to bed now."

Karen seemed to shrink back under her blanket. She began to cry in earnest now, sobbing and smiling.

Sara reached down and wrapped her arms around Karen, she still had to play the part of a Master herself. "I know, I know, let it all out. Now let's go back to bed. It's only midnight, we can get a half-decent night's sleep still before Olivia wakes us at 6 o'clock sharp."

As they remade the bed and got under the covers Karen hugged Sara tight and said, "Thank you."

Day 71

Julie watched the door close behind Jake and began to cry silently. She didn't know why she was crying, she just was. They had spent most of the last ten days together constantly. Now he was leaving for his first day of work in all the time Julie had known him. He had never worked when he was living at home. His parents provided everything he needed. Even now they had the money from his college fund and had just received the debit card to access more the day before. But he had insisted that he had to 'be a man' and go out and provide for them. Julie supposed that he was right. She could never go home if things stayed like this but still, she felt like their relationship had hit a next level or two in the last week.

After nine months of pawing and groping Julie was ready to go all the way and not just lay in bed next to him but to love him properly. But he seemed oddly indifferent. They had spent their first night in a run-down motel. She clung to him and slept soundly for twelve hours in his arms. They had found this cottage the next day and moved right in. It was tiny and nothing special but it was just one block away from the main road through the little town and was clean, inexpensive, and safe. Julie couldn't ask for much more at that moment.

The second night she felt comfortable enough to finally unleash all the sexual tension that had been building for the last month. She became the tentacle monster and it was Jake's turn to deftly avoid HER attacks. He did so almost unconsciously and with an ease that annoyed Julie to no end. The next morning she confronted him and he just said that he didn't want to 'take advantage of the situation'. And that they needed to keep things 'normal' between them or else things could spin out of control in this new environment. At the time Julie thought he was full of horseshit, she even said so. She almost accused him of fucking some other girl behind her back but knew that that was ridiculous. Besides Candy and his mom, he hadn't been within twenty feet of another woman unless he had been with Julie for weeks.

After a few days of getting utilities set up and settling in Julie had come to agree with Jake. If they had had sex that first night in the cottage they probably wouldn't have stopped. They would be fucking like bunnies for weeks maybe a month or two. Then what? What if they got bored of it? Bored of each other? Julie reasoned that they were still in a pretty stressful situation and in the back of her head she still felt hunted. So perhaps it was best to fall into their same old pattern. But still, Julie did kind of miss the tentacle monster. Jake hadn't tried to get in her pants in what felt like an unusually long time.